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Twitter Picks Russia Over the U.S.

The company cuts off the CIA. But selling data to Vladimir Putin? That’s fine.

By

L. Gordon Crovitz

May 15, 2016 5:04 p.m. ET

Silicon Valley’s hostility to U.S. intelligence and law enforcement reached a new low last week when Twitter rejected the Central Intelligence Agency as a customer for data based on its tweets—while continuing to serve an entity controlled by Vladimir Putin.

The Wall Street Journal broke the news that Twitter decided U.S. intelligence services could no longer buy services from Dataminr, which has a unique relationship with Twitter. Dataminr is the only company Twitter allows to have access to its full stream of hundreds of...